Magic City (21 page)

“Cielo's still alive?”

“That's what I hear. Mean old son of a bitch still hanging on.”

“He'll talk to us?”

“If he doesn't kill you first.”

Thorn shook Jimbo's hand and thanked him for his time. He and Snake were halfway back to the parking lot when Jimbo called them to a halt.

They stood out in the sun and waited while he ambled over, puffing on a fresh cigarette.

“Just remembered one other item of interest.”

Snake was massaging his right temple, as if a headache had taken root.

“Time that picture was taken, 1964, Lansky was quite the ladies' man.”

“Yeah?”

“His main squeeze around then was a woman by the name of Lola Henderson.”

Jimbo smiled at Snake with the quiet satisfaction of a man who's just fanned out a Royal Flush.

Snake sailed through Miami traffic as though he were telepathic, knowing where the openings would occur, which lanes were about to clog. Operating on his cabbie's instincts. They drove into Little Havana, then farther north, working their way around the sprawling Miami airport, then into the crush of Hialeah.

Snake was silent, but Thorn could see the grind of his jaw.

Thorn worked it around. What they knew, what was left to know.

At least two of the five people in the photo had been at the Morales house a few hours after the fight. Humberto Berasategui was in league with the big man, Runyon. More than likely everyone sitting between them was involved as well. With Pauline Caufield front and center, and the men tilting her way, it was tempting to believe she was calling the shots. That the Morales family died because of some operation the CIA was running. At the moment that's what the photo was saying.

But learning exactly what was driving each of those five people was what mattered now. And uncovering their motives was going to be a hell of a lot more challenging than simply learning their names. To untangle the web of forces that brought those five citizens together in that row and sent them forward into that black winter night on their mission of murder.

It was nine-thirty in the morning, the Miami sky was a bright, unbroken blue. Scents of broiling meat and harsh coffee filtered into the car. The farther north they traveled, the more congested the neighborhoods grew. Every store sign and billboard was in Spanish, tobacco shops and Latin supermarkets and cafeterias with serving windows that opened onto the sidewalks, drawing groups of leathery men in guayaberas with their paper cups of café cubano.

Thorn recalled that Hialeah was a Seminole phrase meaning “high prairie.” Though as far as he could see, the only spaces that might qualify as prairies anymore were the vast asphalt parking lots.

“What's wrong?” he asked after Snake's third darting look in the mirror.

Snake shook his head.

“It's how I drive. Two eyes forward, one eye back.”

Snake located the address Jimbo gave them and pulled into the dirt driveway of a tiny pink cement-block house. The windows were crisscrossed by security bars, and angry dogs prowled the backyard. All along the street old cars cluttered front yards. Green lawns and shade trees were in short supply.

“This can't be right,” Snake said.

“Even godfathers fall on hard times.”

A four-foot-tall Virgin Mary was planted next to the sidewalk and seemed to cast a disapproving glance Thorn's way.

“We need to talk,” Snake said.

“About Lola and Lansky?”

“I don't give a shit about Lola and Lansky. So what if they were lovers? That has nothing to do with me or my dead sister.”

“The mayor steals the mobster's girl. Sounds significant to me.”

“Lola was a whore. She slept with my real father, too.”

“Morales?”

“Yes, Jorge Morales,” Snake said. “She was having an affair with him. I believe it ended at Christmas. My mother gave my father an ultimatum and he dumped Lola.”

“Christmas 1963?”

“Yes, but it doesn't mean anything.”

“Are you nuts? She's Lansky's girlfriend, she had an affair with your father, then a month later Morales is murdered and Lola winds up raising you and Carlos. Of course it means something.”

“This is not about love affairs. It's about Cuba. And this woman Caufield. What else do you know about her that you haven't told me?”

Thorn was shaking his head. It was always about love. Always, always about love. Lost love, love denied, the obsessive hunger for love. Parental or romantic. Whether it was twisted or pure, fulfilled or unrequited, love was always at the source.

“Pauline Caufield, Thorn. What do you know?”

“I understand she's shown a strong interest in our recent comings and goings. That's all.”

“Is that right? She's here in Miami?”

“I believe so, yes.”

“How do we find her?”

“I don't think we can walk up to the CIA home office and ask for an appointment, if that's what you think.”

“Don't mock me, Thorn.”

“Look, I'm not hiding anything from you, Snake. It's all on the table. Do me the same.”

Snake's gaze was fixed on the pink house before them. A young woman opened the front door and came out to stand in the sunlight. She was in her thirties, with hard cheekbones and dark eyes. She wore her black hair long and loose and had on tight jeans and a man's white business shirt with the tail out. In her right hand she held a small automatic. She raised the pistol. Not exactly aiming, but close.

“Who are you? What do you want?” she called.

Thorn got out the door and waited for Snake to join him.

“We're looking for Miguel Cielo.”

She considered it a moment, chewing the edge of her lip.

“Just a couple of questions, that's all.”

“About what?”

“A photograph.”

“Who are you, what are you doing here?”

Before Thorn could answer, Snake stepped forward.

“My name is Morales,” he said. “My father was Jorge, my mother María Gonzalez, and my sister was Carmen. In 1964 the three were slaughtered by men in stocking masks. My sister was fourteen years old. The assassins also murdered five of my father's militiamen. You may remember the event.”

The woman lowered the gun.

“It occurred before I was born,” she said. “But yes, I've heard of it.”

Something happened to her body, a softening of her stance. She reset her feet, angling to the side and glancing backward through the screen door.

“Stay where you are. I'll pass on your request.”

Eyeing them carefully, she gathered her hair one-handed, lifted it off her neck, then released it. She stepped inside the house, and Thorn could see her through the elaborate scroll-work of the security door as she spoke into a phone.

A moment later she came back out onto the porch.

“This is very unusual,” she said. “He's willing to speak to you.”

Thorn started forward, but the young woman raised her hand and halted him.

“He's not here. I'll take you to him.”

“Who are you?” Thorn said.

“I'm Mariana Cielo, his granddaughter. I am the gatekeeper.”

Snake touched Thorn's shoulder and bent to his ear.

“A green Jaguar sedan is parked a few houses to the south.”

“What about it?”

“It's following us,” Snake said. “It's my father's car.”

 

Thorn caught glimpses of the green Jaguar in the traffic behind them as Mariana guided Snake south through the city.

It was a thirty-minute drive to Cielo's neighborhood, a wooded area rimming Biscayne Bay where the Grove and the Gables shared a border.

Thorn stopped at the entrance and Mariana drew a remote from her purse and rolled open the wrought-iron gate.

“This is more like it,” Thorn said.

“More like it?” said Mariana.

“More befitting a man of your grandfather's stature.”

The dwelling where Miguel Cielo lived was two stories with a red barrel-tile roof and a long brick drive lined with royal palms. The villa had spacious balconies, porticoes and slatted shutters, and the quiet, dignified feel of a Spanish convent. It was positioned in the middle of several acres of sprawling lawns and thick groves of bamboo and a pond where egrets and herons stood frozen in hunting poses.

Snake coasted up to the front door and they all got out.

Just inside the gleaming mahogany door two men met them, one with a shaved head, the other with wavy black tresses that brushed his bulky shoulders. Both had the stumpy look of shot-putters a decade past their prime. They wore jeans and body-hugging T-shirts, and each held a micro Uzi. Twenty rounds apiece, if Thorn's memory served.

Shaved Head said something in Spanish and Wavy Hair laughed.

The foyer they stepped into was larger than Thorn's old stilt house. Overhead an extravagant stained-glass window splashed rainbows across the terra-cotta tiles. The ceiling was planked with honey-colored oak, and the house wrapped around a central courtyard that filled the rooms with golden sunlight.

“Hands up, turn around, you first.” Shaved Head was the leader. His sidekick stepped forward and Thorn did as he was told. No reason to get pissy with security. Especially with forty rounds between them and an IQ in the same range.

Wavy Hair frisked Thorn one-handed, holding the Uzi in his right. He extracted the .38 from one pocket, the cell phone from the other. Made another comment in Spanish, which drew a gruff laugh from his buddy. He lifted Thorn's shirt and found the envelope and drew it out. He looked inside and pulled out the photograph.

“What the fuck is this?”

“I'm hoping Se
or Cielo can enlighten us about that.”

Wavy Hair examined it for a moment, then showed it to his partner as if it might hold some hidden danger that escaped him.

“That Muhammad Ali?”

“He was Cassius Clay at the time,” Thorn said.

“Never did like that draft-dodging asshole. He dead yet?”

“Give it back to him,” Mariana said.

Wavy Hair looked at top dog for permission. The shaved one nodded.

Thorn took back the photo.

“Now you, skinny man, hands in the air.”

Snake raised his arms and the shot-putter patted him down harder than he needed to.

“Stop showing off, Roberto.” Mariana used the tone of a sister who long ago assumed maternal authority. “Abuelo wants to meet them.”

Wavy Hair laid the pistol and the cell phone on a side table near the front door and trained the Uzi's sights on Thorn.

“These fine men are my brothers, Andrés and Robbie. Now my grandfather waits.”

She led them through the door and down a hallway toward the sunny rear wing of the house. The tag team stayed close behind. Halfway down the hall, one of them goosed Thorn with the barrel of his Uzi.

The old man, Miguel Cielo, was dark-skinned and silver-haired and had the large, sensual features of one who has indulged deeply in the world's pleasures and now is paying the price. A wooden box of cigars lay on the table beside his chair. A large blue ashtray held half a dozen butts.

His chair faced a two-story-high glassed-in butterfly garden. The air inside the glass was alive with darting color, wisps of wing fumbling from blossom to bloom.

Mariana made the formal introductions and stepped back.

Cielo didn't bother with Thorn but studied Snake for several moments, grunted, and turned his eyes back to the trapped butterflies.

The brothers were watching Snake with interest, as if they were aware of his reputation, this childhood killer. A titleholder in their chosen profession.

Snake held the photo out to Cielo, and the old man looked at it for a while, then raised a stumpy finger and tapped the face of Meyer Lansky. He kept on tapping the glossy image, as if he meant to stab his finger through its surface.

Cielo's voice was soft and high-pitched, almost feminine.

“Lansky was a son of a bitch. An arrogant Jew.”

Snake stood waiting with the photograph still held out before the old man, although Cielo seemed to have had his fill of it.

Cielo said, “There was an
oportunidad perfecto
. But it was wasted. Wasted on Jorge Morales. That
payaso
.”

“My father, a clown?” Snake took the photo away.

Robbie heard Snake's aggravation and turned his weapon.

“I mean no disrespect. But the truth is, your father, Jorge Morales, was a ridiculous choice. He commanded no more than two dozen men in his militia. A gang of
obreros
playing soldier in the swamp.”

Thorn glanced at Mariana, who stood near a window, looking at the butterflies dancing in the sunlight.

“Menial workers, dishwashers, carpenters,” Cielo said. “There were other militia groups, well trained, from prominent families. Hundreds went into the street to protest the killing of this pitiful militia, but if I had been in charge, thousands would have been in the streets, a great tumult would have resounded through the entire nation. We would be back in Havana now.”

“If you had been in charge?” Thorn said. “I understood you
were
in charge.”

Cielo turned his head slowly and slid his gaze up and down Thorn's frame, as if sizing him for a coffin.

“Who are you?”

“I'm helping Snake find out who killed his parents.”

“Why do you care?”

“I lost a friend yesterday,” Thorn said. “He died because of something hidden in this photograph.”

Cielo looked back at the butterflies. Solid purple, red and yellow, orange and black, iridescent green. Red admirals, swallowtails, monarchs, buckeyes, mourning cloaks, and others Thorn couldn't identify. They settled onto flowers that were not as bright or beautiful as they were, then twitched back into flight.